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MR. BURKE'S REFLECTIONS

ON

THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE,

AND

ON THE PROCEEDINGS IN CERTAIN SOCIETIES IN LONDON

RELATIVE TO THAT EVENT:

IN A LETTER

INTENDED TO HAVE BEEN SENT TO A GENTLEMAN IN PARIS.

1790.

An an

Ir may not be unnecessary to inform the Reader, that the following Reflections had their origin in a correspondence between the Author and a very young gentleman at Paris, who did him the honour of desiring his opinion upon the important transactions, which then, and have ever since, so much occupied the attention of all men. swer was written some time in the month of October 1789; but it was kept back upon prudential considerations. That letter is alluded to in the beginning of the following sheets. It has been since forwarded to the person to whom it was addressed. The reasons for the delay in sending it were assigned in a short letter to the same gentleman. This produced on his part a new and pressing application for the Author's sentiments.

The Author began a second and more full discussion on the subject. This he had some thoughts of publishing early in the last spring; but, the matter gaining upon him, he found that what he had undertaken not only far exceeded the measure of a letter, but that its importance required rather a more detailed consideration than at that time he had any leisure to bestow upon it. However, having thrown down his first thoughts in the form of a letter, and, indeed, when he sat down to write, having intended it for a private letter, he found it difficult to change the form of address, when his sentiments had grown into a greater extent, and had received another direction. A different plan, he is sensible, might be more favourable to a commodious division and distribution of his matter.

DEAR SIR,

You are pleased to call again, and with some earnestness, for my thoughts on the late proceedings in France. I will not give you reason to imagine that I think my sentiments of such value as to wish myself to be solicited about them. They are of too little consequence to be very anxiously either communicated or withheld. It was from attention to you, and to you only, that I hesitated at the time when you first desired to receive them. In the first letter I had the honour to write to you, and which at length I send, I wrote neither for, nor from, any description of men; nor shall I in this. My errours, if any, are my own. My reputation alone is to answer for them.

You see, Sir, by the long letter I have trans

mitted to you, that though I do most heartily wish that France may be animated by a spirit of rational liberty, and that I think you bound, in all honest policy, to provide a permanent body in which that spirit may reside, and an effectual organ by which it may act, it is my misfortune to entertain great doubts concerning several material points in your late transactions.

You imagined, when you wrote last, that I might possibly be reckoned among the approvers of certain proceedings in France, from the solemn publick seal of sanction they have received from two clubs of gentlemen in London, called the Constitutional Society, and the Revolution Society. I certainly have the honour to belong to more

clubs than one, in which the constitution of this | them as a kind of privileged persons; as no inkingdom, and the principles of the glorious Revo- considerable members in the diplomatick body. lution, are held in high reverence; and I reckon This is one among the revolutions which have myself among the most forward in my zeal for given splendour to obscurity, and distinction to maintaining that constitution and those principles undiscerned merit. Until very lately I do not rein their utmost purity and vigour. It is because I collect to have heard of this club. I am quite sure do so that I think it necessary for me that there that it never occupied a moment of my thoughts: should be no mistake. Those who cultivate the nor, I believe, those of any person out of their memory of our Revolution, and those who are at- own set. I find, upon enquiry, that on the annitached to the constitution of this kingdom, will versary of the Revolution in 1688, a club of distake good care how they are involved with per- senters, but of what denomination I know not, sons, who under the pretext of zeal towards the have long had the custom of hearing a sermon in Revolution and constitution too frequently wan- one of their churches; and that afterwards they der from their true principles; and are ready on spent the day cheerfully, as other clubs do, at the every occasion to depart from the firm but cautious tavern. But I never heard that any publick meaand deliberate spirit which produced the one, and sure, or political system, much less that the merits which presides in the other. Before I proceed of the constitution of any foreign nation, had to answer the more material particulars in your been the subject of a formal proceeding at their letter, I shall beg leave to give you such informa- festivals; until, to my inexpressible surprise, I tion as I have been able to obtain of the two clubs found them in a sort of publick capacity, by a which have thought proper, as bodies, to interfere congratulatory address, giving an authoritative in the concerns of France; first assuring you, that sanction to the proceedings of the National AsI am not, and that I have never been, a member sembly in France. of either of those societies.

The first, calling itself the Constitutional Society, or Society for Constitutional Information, or by some such title, is, I believe, of seven or eight years standing. The institution of this society appears to be of a charitable, and so far of a laudable, nature it was intended for the circulation, at the expence of the members, of many books, which few others would be at the expence of buying; and which might lie on the hands of the booksellers, to the great loss of an useful body of men. Whether the books, so charitably circulated, were ever as charitably read, is more than I know. Possibly several of them have been exported to France; and, like goods not in request here, may with you have found a market. I have heard much talk of the lights to be drawn from books that are sent from hence. What improvements they have had in their passage (as it is said some liquors are meliorated by crossing the sea) I cannot tell but I never heard a man of common judgment, or the least degree of information, speak a word in praise of the greater part of the publications circulated by that society; nor have their proceedings been accounted, except by some of themselves, as of any serious consequence.

Your national assembly seems to entertain much the same opinion that I do of this poor charitable club. As a nation, you reserved the whole stock of your eloquent acknowledgments for the Revolution Society; when their fellows in the Constitutional were, in equity, entitled to some share. Since you have selected the Revolution Society as the great object of your national thanks and praises, you will think me excusable in making its late conduct the subject of my observations. The National Assembly of France has given importance to these gentlemen by adopting them: and they return the favour, by acting as a committee in England for extending the principles of the National Assembly. Henceforward we must consider

In the ancient principles and conduct of the club, so far at least as they were declared, I see nothing to which I could take exception. I think it very probable, that for some purpose, new members may have entered among them; and that some truly christian politicians, who love to dispense benefits, but are careful to conceal the hand which distributes the dole, may have made them the instruments of their pious designs. Whatever I may have reason to suspect concerning private management, I shall speak of nothing as of a certainty but what is publick.

For one, I should be sorry to be thought, directly or indirectly, concerned in their proceedings. I certainly take my full share, along with the rest of the world, in my individual and private capacity, in speculating on what has been done, or is doing, on the publick stage, in any place ancient or modern; in the republick of Rome, or the republick of Paris; but having no general apostolical mission, being a citizen of a particular state, and being bound up, in a considerable degree, by its publick will, I should think it at least improper and irregular for me to open a formal publick correspondence with the actual government of a foreign nation, without the express authority of the government under which I live.

I should be still more unwilling to enter into that correspondence under any thing like an equivocal description, which to many, unacquainted with our usages, might make the address, in which I joined, appear as the act of persons in some sort of corporate capacity, acknowledged by the laws of this kingdom, and authorized to speak the sense of some part of it. On account of the ambiguity and uncertainty of unauthorized general descriptions, and of the deceit which may be practised under them, and not from mere formality, the house of commons would reject the most sneaking petition for the most trifling object, un

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der that mode of signature to which you have thrown open the folding doors of your presence chamber, and have ushered into your National Assembly with as much ceremony and parade, and with as great a bustle of applause, as if you had been visited by the whole representative majesty of the whole English nation. If what this society has thought proper to send forth had been a piece of argument, it would have signified little whose argument it was. It would be neither the more nor the less convincing on account of the party it came from. But this is only a vote and resolution. It stands solely on authority; and in this case it is the mere authority of individuals, few of whom appear. Their signatures ought, in my opinion, to have been annexed to their instrument. The world would then have the means of knowing how many they are; who they are; and of what value their opinions may be, from their personal abilities, from their knowledge, their experience, or their lead and authority in this state. To me, who am but a plain man, the proceeding looks a little too refined, and too ingenious; it has too much the air of a political stratagem, adopted for the sake of giving, under a high-sounding name, an importance to the publick declarations of this club, which, when the matter came to be closely inspected, they did not altogether so well deserve. It is a policy that has very much the complexion of a fraud.

and their heroick deliverer, the metaphysick knight of the sorrowful countenance.

When I see the spirit of liberty in action, I see a strong principle at work; and this, for a while, is all I can possibly know of it. The wild gas, the fixed air, is plainly broke loose: but we ought to suspend our judgment until the first effervescence is a little subsided, till the liquor is cleared, and until we see something deeper than the agitation. of a troubled and frothy surface. I must be tolerably sure, before I venture publickly to congratulate men upon a blessing, that they have really received one. Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver; and adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings. I should therefore suspend my congratulations on the new liberty of France, until I was informed how it had been combined with government; with publick force; with the discipline and obedience of armies; with the collection of an effective and welldistributed revenue; with morality and religion; with solidity and property; with peace and order; with civil and social manners. All these (in their way) are good things too; and, without them, liberty is not a benefit whilst it lasts, and is not likely to continue long. The effect of liberty to individuals, is, that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations, which may be soon turned into complaints. Prudence would dictate this in the case of separate, insulated, private men; but liberty, when men act in bodies, is power. Considerate people, before they declare themselves, will observe the use which is made of power; and particularly of so trying a thing as new power in new persons, of whose principles, tempers, and dispositions, they have little or no experience, and in situations, where those who appear the most stirring in the scene may possibly not be the real movers.

I flatter myself that I love a manly, moral, regulated liberty as well as any gentleman of that society, be he who he will: and perhaps I have given as good proofs of my attachment to that cause, in the whole course of my publick conduct. I think I envy liberty as little as they do, to any other nation. But I cannot stand forward, and give praise or blame to any thing which relates to human actions, and human concerns, on a simple view of the object, as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of All these considerations however were below the metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances (which transcendental dignity of the Revolution Society. with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in Whilst I continued in the country, from whence reality to every political principle its distinguishing I had the honour of writing to you, I had but an colour and discriminating effect. The circum- imperfect idea of their transactions. On my comstances are what render every civil and political ing to town, I sent for an account of their proscheme beneficial or noxious to mankind. Ab- ceedings, which had been published by their austractedly speaking, government, as well as liberty, thority, containing a sermon of Dr. Price, with is good; yet could I, in common sense, ten years the Duke de Rochefaucault's and the Archbishop ago, have felicitated France on her enjoyment of of Aix's letter, and several other documents ana government (for she then had a government) nexed. The whole of that publication, with the without enquiry what the nature of that govern-manifest design of connecting the affairs of France ment was, or how it was administered? Can I with those of England, by drawing us into an now congratulate the same nation upon its free-imitation of the conduct of the National Assembly, dom? Is it because liberty in the abstract may be classed amongst the blessings of mankind, that I am seriously to felicitate a mad-man, who has escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesome darkness of his cell, on his restoration to the enjoyment of light and liberty? Am I to congratulate a highwayman and murderer, who has broke prison, upon the recovery of his natural rights? This would be to act over again the scene of the criminals condemned to the gallies,

gave me a considerable degree of uneasiness. The effect of that conduct upon the power, credit, prosperity, and tranquillity of France, became every day more evident. The form of constitution to be settled, for its future polity, became more clear. We are now in a condition to discern, with tolerable exactness, the true nature of the object held up to our imitation. If the prudence of reserve and decorum dictates silence in some circumstances, in others prudence of a higher order may justify

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us in speaking our thoughts. The beginnings of confusion with us in England are at present feeble enough; but, with you, we have seen an infancy, still more feeble, growing by moments into a strength to heap mountains upon mountains, and to wage war with heaven itself. Whenever our neighbour's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own. Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security.

Solicitous chiefly for the peace of my own country, but by no means unconcerned for yours, I wish to communicate more largely what was at first intended only for your private satisfaction. I shall still keep your affairs in my eye, and continue to address myself to you. Indulging myself in the freedom of epistolary intercourse, I beg leave to throw out my thoughts, and express my feelings, just as they arise in my mind, with very little attention to formal method. I set out with the proceedings of the Revolution Society; but I shall not confine myself to them. Is it possible I should? It appears to me as if I were in a great crisis, not of the affairs of France alone, but of all Europe, perhaps of more than Europe. All circumstances taken together, the French Revolution is the most astonishing that has hitherto happened in the world. The most wonderful things are brought about in many instances by means the most absurd and ridiculous; in the most ridiculous modes; and, apparently, by the most contemptible instruments. Every thing seems out of nature in this strange chaos of levity and ferocity, and of all sorts of crimes jumbled together with all sorts of follies. In viewing this monstrous tragi-comick scene, the most opposite passions necessarily succeed, and sometimes mix with each other in the mind; alternate contempt and indignation; alternate laughter and tears; alternate scorn and horrour.

It cannot however be denied, that to some this strange scene appeared in quite another point of view. Into them it inspired no other sentiments than those of exultation and rapture. They saw nothing in what has been done in France, but a firm and temperate exertion of freedom; so consistent, on the whole, with morals and with piety, as to make it deserving not only of the secular applause of dashing Machiavelian politicians, but to render it a fit theme for all the devout effusions of sacred eloquence.

On the forenoon of the 4th of November last, Doctor Richard Price, a non-conforming minister of eminence, preached at the dissenting meetinghouse of the Old Jewry, to his club or society, a very extraordinary miscellaneous sermon, in which there are some good moral and religious sentiments, and not ill expressed, mixed up with a sort of porridge of various political opinions and reflections: but the Revolution in France is the grand ingredient in the cauldron. I consider the address transmitted by the Revolution Society to

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the National Assembly, through Earl Stanhope, as originating in the principles of the sermon, and as a corollary from them. It was moved by the preacher of that discourse. It was passed by those who came reeking from the effect of the sermon, without any censure or qualification, expressed or implied. If, however, any of the gentlemen concerned shall wish to separate the sermon from the resolution, they know how to acknowledge the one, and to disavow the other. They may do it: I cannot.

For my part, I looked on that sermon as the publick declaration of a man much connected with literary caballers, and intriguing philosophers; with political theologians, and theological politicians, both at home and abroad. I know they set him up as a sort of oracle; because, with the best intentions in the world, he naturally philippizes, and chants his prophetick song in exact unison with their designs.

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That sermon is in a strain which I believe has not been heard in this kingdom, in any of the pulpits which are tolerated or encouraged in it, since the year 1648; when a predecessor of Dr. Price, the Rev. Hugh Peters, made the vault of the king's own chapel at St. James's ring with the honour and privilege of the saints, who, with the "high praises of God in their mouths, and a two-edged sword in their hands, were to "execute judgment on the heathen, and punishments upon the people; to bind their kings with "chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron."* Few harangues from the pulpit, except in the days of your league in France, or in the days of our solemn league and covenant in England, have ever breathed less of the spirit of moderation than. this lecture in the Old Jewry. Supposing, however, that something like moderation were visible in this political sermon; yet politicks and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement. No sound ought to be heard in the church but the healing voice of christian charity. The cause of civil li-C berty and civil government gains as little as that of religion by this confusion of duties. Those who quit their proper character, to assume what does not belong to them, are, for the greater part, ignorant both of the character they leave, and of the character they assume. Wholly unacquainted with the world in which they are so fond of meddling, and inexperienced in all its affairs, on which they pronounce with so much confidence, they have nothing of politicks but the passions they excite. Surely the church is a place where one day's truce ought to be allowed to the dissensions and animosities of mankind.

This pulpit style, revived after so long a discontinuance, had to me the air of novelty, and of a novelty not wholly without danger. I do not charge this danger equally to every part of the discourse. The hint given to a noble and reverend lay-divine, who is supposed high in office in one of our universities, and other lay-divines

↑ Discourse on the Love of our Country, Nov. 4th, 1789, by Dr. Richard Price, 3rd edition, p. 17 and 18.

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one sweeping clause of ban and anathema, and proclaims usurpers by circles of longitude and latitude, over the whole globe, it behoves them to consider how they admit into their territories these apostolick missionaries, who are to tell their

concern. It is ours, as a domestick interest of some moment, seriously to consider the solidity of the only principle upon which these gentlemen acknowledge a king of Great Britain to be entitled to their allegiance. N

"of rank and literature," may be proper and seasonable, though somewhat new. If the noble Seekers should find nothing to satisfy their pious fancies in the old staple of the national church, or in all the rich variety to be found in the wellassorted warehouses of the dissenting congrega-subjects they are not lawful kings. That is their tions, Dr. Price advises them to improve upon non-conformity; and to set up, each of them, a separate meeting-house upon his own particular principles.* It is somewhat remarkable that this reverend divine should be so earnest for setting up new churches, and so perfectly indifferent con This doctrine, as applied to the prince now on cerning the doctrine which may be taught in the British throne, either is nonsense, and therethem. His zeal is of a curious character. It is fore neither true nor false, or it affirms a most not for the propagation of his own opinions, but unfounded, dangerous, illegal, and unconstituof any opinions. It is not for the diffusion of tional, position. According to this spiritual doctor truth, but for the spreading of contradiction. Let of politicks, if his majesty does not owe his crown the noble teachers but dissent, it is no matter from to the choice of his people, he is no lawful king, whom or from what. This great point once se- Now nothing can be more untrue than that the cured, it is taken for granted their religion will crown of this kingdom is so held by his majesty. be rational and manly. I doubt whether religion Therefore if you follow their rule, the king of would reap all the benefits which the calculating Great Britain, who most certainly does not owe divine computes from this "great company of his high office to any form of popular election, is "great preachers." It would certainly be a valu- in no respect better than the rest of the gang of able addition of non-descripts to the ample collec- usurpers, who reign, or rather rob, all over the tion of known classes, genera and species, which face of this our miserable world, without any sort at present beautify the hortus siccus of dissent. A of right or title to the allegiance of their people. sermon from a noble duke, or a noble marquis, or The policy of this general doctrine, so qualified, anoble earl, or baron bold, would certainly encrease is evident enough. The propagators of this poliand diversify the amusements of this town, which tical gospel are in hopes that their abstract prinbegins to grow satiated with the uniform round ciple (their principle that a popular choice is of its vapid dissipations. I should only stipulate necessary to the legal existence of the sovereign that these new Mess-Johns in robes and coronets magistracy) would be overlooked, whilst the king should keep some sort of bounds in the democra- of Great Britain was not affected by it. In the tick and levelling principles which are expected mean time the ears of their congregations would from their titled pulpits. The new evangelists be gradually habituated to it, as if it were a first will, I dare say, disappoint the hopes that are principle admitted without dispute. For the preconceived of them. They will not become, literally sent it would only operate as a theory, pickled in as well as figuratively, polemick divines, nor be the preserving juices of pulpit eloquence, and laid disposed so to drill their congregations, that they by for future use. Condo et compono quæ mox may, as in former blessed times, preach their doc- depromere possim. By this policy, whilst our gotrines to regiments of dragoons and corps of in-vernment is soothed with a reservation in its favour, fantry and artillery. Such arrangements, however favourable to the cause of compulsory freedom, civil and religious, may not be equally conducive to the national tranquillity. These few restrictions I hope are no great stretches of intolerance, no very violent exertions of despotism.

to which it has no claim, the security, which it has in common with all governments, so far as opinion is security, is taken away.

Thus these politicians proceed, whilst little notice is taken of their doctrines; but when they come to be examined upon the plain meaning of But I may say of our preacher, "utinam nugis their words, and the direct tendency of their doc"tota illa dedisset tempora sævitiæ."-All things trines, then equivocations and slippery construcin this his fulminating bull are not of so innoxious tion come into play. When they say the king a tendency. His doctrines affect our constitution owes his crown to the choice of his people, and in its vital parts. He tells the Revolution Society, is therefore the only lawful sovereign in the world, in this political sermon, that his majesty "is al- they will perhaps tell us they mean to say no more "most the only lawful king in the world, because than that some of the king's predecessors have "the only one who owes his crown to the choice been called to the throne by some sort of choice; of his people." As to the kings of the world, all and therefore he owes his crown to the choice of of whom (except one) this arch pontiff of the rights his people. Thus, by a miserable subterfuge, they of men, with all the plenitude, and with more than hope to render their proposition safe, by rendering the boldness, of the papal deposing power in itsit nugatory. They are welcome to the asylum meridian fervour of the twelfth century, puts into

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"Those who dislike that mode of worship which is prescribed "by publick authority, ought, if they can find no worship out of "the church which they approve, to set up a separate worship "for themselves; and by doing this, and giving an example of a

they seek for their offence, since they take refuge

"rational and manly worship, men of weight from their rank and "literature may do the greatest service to society and the world." -P. 18, Dr. Price's Sermon.

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